Luxury Briefing.

EVERY year at The Future Laboratory we sit down with clients and look at the Future of Luxury. This year we will publish our findings in March, but in the interim, for a small, select group of clients including Diageo, Burberry and American Express, we held one of our network evenings in association with our online consumer network LS:N Global, to tease through those issues that are likely to change our relationship with luxury brands over the coming decade, one we have called the Turbulent Teens, for the wide-scale changes it is set to usher in.

Among those speaking was Kelly Luchford of Luchford APM, a consultancy that specialises in luxury PR for a variety of brands. She provided a preview of a report called Luxury PR in a Digital Age that will be released shortly at a series of industry events. Published in association with The Future Laboratory, the report looks at how global media landscapes are changing, how these changes in turn are impacting the values and mindsets of the luxury brands that inhabit these spaces – and, more importantly, how said luxury brands now need to speak to the media, consumers and ‘fans’ alike as the blogs, tweets, chatrooms, forums, websites and social networks turn all notion of how we should behave as brands online, on its head. Now, anything goes, and for some that means that everything goes pear-shaped: few are equipped to navigate these changes in a way that still allows them to keep control. Here are a few very salient steps to consider when managing your own online PR…

Step 1: Listen   Listen to the conversations going on about your brand. Reasons for listening include: Online Reputation Management (ORM), ongoing campaign management, gathering information for your digital brand audit. But before doing any of the above, one of the first steps to digital listening is typing the brand name into Google. If you are fourth or fifth, then you already have work to do.

Step 2: Analyse that   Once you’ve listened actively for a minimum of six to eight weeks, analyse the information to create a digital brand audit, including: (a) Your brand’s digital footprint (where it’s being talked about) (b) Your audience’s DNA (their passions, behaviours, habits, stuff they talk about in their world) (c) Your brand’s ‘centres of influence’ (the sites, networks, blogs, platforms etc that are most influential) (d) What’s being said? (e) Who’s saying what – community leaders, or individuals? (f) Your competitors’ digital brand audit. When you’ve done the above, you’re almost ready to put your brand’s head above the parapet, but not before…

Step 3: Set goals   “If you don’t enter the groundswell with a specific goal, you will fail,” Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li write in their seminal work on social media marketing, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. And they are right! There’s no point in just being on Facebook because other luxury companies are there. You need a compelling reason – as in it is the place where your fans are most active, where you can best display the brand’s irreverent side and so on. Once the goal (and your medium) is set, luxury PRs should consider the off and online tools in concert, and construct a plan that attains the goal – regardless of tool used. Whether it’s blogger outreach programme, an invite-only event or a Twitter feed, the key PR activity is getting involved in the conversation, engaging and energizing luxury consumers. Oh yes, and about keeping that conversation going – this provides you with fantastic, live and 24/7 feedback. Invaluable, and cheaper than paying for all those people now sitting twiddling their thumbs in those ludicrously outdated market research departments brands continue to maintain.

Step 4: Engage   Reasons for engaging include: dealing with detractors; anchoring (because if you’re not anchoring how your client’s brand should be viewed, who is?); being part of the conversation; keeping your client’s brand front-of-mind; communicating a special offer – whatever the reason for engaging, the important thing is that you do it. The days of “getting back to you” are well and truly dead. Twitter afterall has effectively killed the video, TV, and media star. It has made your brand live… and your
customers livid if they don’t get a response to their query asap. ASAP. NOW.

Step 5: Create brand ambassadors  Fans, friendsters… people, in short, who can spread the word and “energise the groundswell”.  When Gucci emailed their best customers in New York telling them about a private sale before the official sale began, these brand ambassadors passed the email on to so many people that the company made $1m in one day – 10 times the normal sales volume. So don’t just see it as a PR strategy – use it to drive profitability as well.

Give bloggers a good story – and try to do it with as much visual  and audio material that you can, cleared for use ‘exclusives’, and a digital media press kit or package that they can use to enhance their site, blog, network, or Youtube channel in a way that makes them look for plugged in and professional. And we agree. “This is about mutual respect and open collaboration”, says Luchford, “If you do that for them – they will return the compliment.” Nuff said. So off you go.

www.thefuturelaboratory.com & kelly.luchford@luchfordapm.com

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